My Dear Natalie,
We aimed to keep it low-key today, with a lot less time in the car and more time outside exploring. To that end, after breakfast we drove just a few miles up the road to Beach 4. It was a short hike down to the beach from the road, then a stroll across the sand to a large, rocky outcropping.
The tide had been going out for a while, exposing an otherworldly landscape in the crevices and pools between the rocks — crusty barnacles, clusters of mussels, colonies of luminous green sea anemones, and brown, purple and orange starfish. It was still more than two hours until low tide, so, under a blanket of low clouds and mist, we spent that time poking around the tide pools at Beach 4, and at Ruby (!) Beach, further north.
I took a lot of photos. It’s kind of ridiculous.
From there, we spent an hour driving inland to the Hoh Rainforest Visitors Center, which is apparently a required stop for everyone who visits the national park, because that place was packed with day hikers as well as overnight backpackers who were pulling their gear out of the cars, strapping it on their backs and heading up the 18-mile trail to the summit of Mount Olympus, the highest point in the park, at about 8,000 feet.
We had a picnic lunch under a moss-draped tree, next to a swampy pond that looked like piranha and crocodiles could leap out at any moment. The Hoh Rainforest gets about 150 inches of rain a year, making it the wettest place in the continental U.S. (This, by the way, is why Stephenie Meyer set her “Twilight” books here. Yesterday, Dad read from the internet that Ms. Meyer, who is based in Phoenix, sat down to write her vampire books and googled “wettest place in the U.S.” She had no other connection to the area. Jeeeezus, what a hack. I think I’ll write tomorrow’s blog entry from National Park of American Samoa using the same professional writing technique. )
After lunch, we took a brief hike — through cool spruce groves, past banks of enormous ferns, and big-leaf maples dripping with moss, alongside a frigid Hoh River gushing with milky, silt-filled glacier melt and across a crystal-clear spring-fed brook — on the Interstate Highway of national park trails. There were so many people on the path, that folks had to merge, speed up to pass on the left and pull over to take photos. It was incredibly silly. So we didn’t stay long.
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| Dad is doing his Bigfoot impression. |
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| Charlie gave up on Junior Ranger activities after Crater Lake. :-( But Clare is still going for it! |
We drove back into Forks for a few groceries, then headed back to the cabin. Clare made dinner while I sat at the lodge with a glass of wine and my laptop. As you have figured out, there is no WiFi and very spotty cell service here, so I just spent the time getting caught up on my writing.
It’s sunny now, and we’re talking about having another fire on the beach before bed. So I’ll wrap this up. We haven’t communicated much in the last couple of days. I hope you are well, my love. Work hard. Have fun. We’ll see you soon.
I think about you all the time, and miss you very much. I love you, and can’t wait to see you soon.
Love, Mom
xoxoxoxoxoxo
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